But the greatest of these is chastity : a study of Spanish nuns

Abstract

This study is about a group of Spanish nuns who belong to an international teaching Congregation. The lives of these women have been shaped by their position in two distinct but related social formations. One of these is the Roman Catholic Church; the other is Spanish society. The position of the nuns in each instance has been determined by historically produced social relations, particularly relations of power, and has been essentially influenced by the place of the Church in Spanish society. The result has been a duality of experience for these women that their present interpretation and practice incorporates and reflects. Fundamental to this dual experience for the nuns has been the historical and structural effects of their implicit choice of the religious life as an option for autonomy. The option for autonomy, however, was situated within social relations based on hierarchical and patriarchal interpretation that had developed in the Church. In this context, their option for chastity was an implicit attempt, based on a control over their own sexuality and its related rejection of a socially defined domestic role, for control over their own lives. Because of women’s structural subordination within the Church, however, the dynamic of the choice of chastity was generally thwarted and subverted in the institution of religious life to which these women belonged, and the generative relation produced for their practice by patriarchal domination was that of obedience. The structural opposition for these nuns in their experience of traditional religious life, therefore, was an historically constructed contradiction between chastity and obedience. Within the social relations generated by this contradiction, an ideological definition of the symbolic order made orthodox interpretation in the symbolic mode a principal means of control. For the nuns in the Centre-South Province of the Congregation in Spain, the experience of these general relations was mediated through the particular historical conditions of Spanish society. These acted in their earlier experiences to reinforce traditional relations by isolating the nuns from the effects of their particular involvement in the historical process. At the same time, the nuns’ official position within the Church eventually embroiled them in the bitter social and political conflicts that provoked the outbreak of Civil War in 1936. After 1939, and particularly in the forties and fifties, the same position in the Church insulated them, as happened with the rest of Spanish society, from the pressures for change that developed in other parts of the world. The nuns who experienced these events form one clear group in the Province. Only when the Church itself moved to change official interpretation, which it did in the Second Vatican Council, did the nuns themselves become aware of their isolation and of the need for change. This awareness coincided with fundamental economic and social transformations in Spanish society itself. The creative acceptance of change by the nuns was based on a shift from symbolic (mythical) to historical interpretation after the Vatican Council and, as a result, their emergence from the dominance of ideology and the symbolic order. Their capacity to change was based on previous experience, limited though it may have been, of spaces of autonomy created by practices based on the expression of their choice of chastity in professional work, particularly in education. Nevertheless, the practices developed by the nuns in the Centre-South Province in their reinterpretation of their religious commitment constitute what is seen as a possibly intolerable threat to the Congregation as an institution within the Church. As a result, these women are experiencing attempts by the Provincial government to reimpose constraints generated by interpretations and practices rooted in their past. These attempts are based on an ideological reinterpretation of the symbolic order, and central to them is the reinstitution of obedience. Note on Spanish Spellings Because of the almost complete inconsistency in English publications with regard to Spanish place names and proper names, I have retained the original spellings throughout the thesis. The two exceptions I have made for places are Catalonia (Cataluha) and the Basque Country (Pais Vasco or Euskadi); for propernames, I have used the English forms for some of the monarchs. In these few cases there does appear to be general agreement on the use of an anglicized form. Note on translations from Spanish texts The translations throughout the thesis from original Spanish documents and texts are my own.